Vice Well Rewarded
by kdewitt
Summary: Phyllis has been dominating Gene but he finally confesses he's been infatuated with his DI. Gene tries to get Sam to hit him but Sam is reluctant at first. When he finally does Sam is surprised by the result.
1. Honour Well Chastised

**Honour Well Chastised**

The floor was filthy, finely dusted with months of neglect and heartily crusted with the mud from scuffling detectives' shoes. It wasn't something you would have noticed until you were kissing it like he was now with his pockmarked cheeks pressed firmly into the cold concrete. His back arched upwards toward the only dim light in the room, a small lamp on his desk that displayed the bruises and blood as proudly as the trophies on his shelves.

Phyllis thought he looked at home here, bound and bleeding in his own office.

"Why are you here, Gene?" The crack of her crop added to the sharpness in her voice.

The infamous DCI Gene Hunt was at WPC Phyllis Dobb's feet and when she hit him he winced but didn't cry out. Phyllis remembers with remorse that he's never cried out.

"Been bad," is all he manages between gritted teeth.

"Again, _sir_?" She smirked, mocking. "Haven't learned much have ya?"

Phyllis doesn't dress up in leather for this because it's not about showing off or feeling sexy. She never liked those 10p porn mags showcasing gorgeous girls with their fat lips and blow up tits in skimpy leather limply holding some feather tickler. That leather-fetish bollocks with useless pretty bints was marketed to those who were stupid enough to think real submission was cute and harmless.

Phyllis Dobbs, however, was not harmless so she wore the uniform she wore everyday because there was already a certain authority behind it. She was the desk sergeant and station wardress, the head of sign-ins and slip-ups. In charge of the cells, the police dispatcher and weapons she kept logs of everything like some ancient gatekeeper (because people giggled when you said logkeeper). Phyllis even had a log of the lost and found which was incidentally _in_the lost and found so she had started a new log and said the previous one was filed under "lost". She made A division run, and sure it didn't sparkle like it was brand new but maid wasn't in her job description and neither was cheery, happy or gay. The floor ran like a rusty watch under Phyllis's hawk-like gaze but it ran nonetheless.

This was the authority she held when she whipped DCI Hunt.

"You're having fun aren't you Barberella?" Gene snorted, flexing his hands against the metal cuffs until they bit back. It hurt, she knew it did.

"You know what talking back gets you." Phyllis lashed at him until his pale English skin was stained red, teasing his bruises until they opened up and bled again before making her mark on virgin territory. She logged the bruises and cuts that she could see and guessed which ones wouldn't show till morning.

Gene bore the pain like a martyr, taking every sharp sting and cruel stroke somewhere deep into him where he thought he needed it.

Phyllis mused at how many criminals this man had given the same treatment; trussing the bad men of Manchester up like animals for slaughter and beating them into submission. Now the roles were reversed and her duty was to castigate their sheriff without the luxury of a flashy badge or a book of morals, just a pair of handcuffs and the crop in her hands.

"Tell me what you've done this time. Then you'll get your punishment."

Phyllis was always surprised at how temperamental these men parading around as heroes were. One bad night with a girl and they entire station had to listen to "I sicked up on her oh whoa is me" on repeat like a top 40 radio hit. There was never any of that talk from her WPCs, she simply didn't allow it. Phyllis very clearly explained if some bloke broke their heart they could scrub the loo with their tears because at least then they could still be useful. Gene Hunt hadn't struck her as one of these kinds of men; in a way she was right.

The first time Gene came to her was over a particularly difficult case. There was a string of murders with several connections between them so Hunt had banged up a local nuisance for the offense: case closed. But not two weeks later another girl showed up dead with the same m.o. Gene ruled it a copycat but the very clear possibility of getting it wrong ate away at him. Denial was his first method of escape, then whiskey, then her.

Phyllis started off as gently as she could manage, more out of respect for him than fear of hurting him –bare chest, bound limbs and a good whipping. She wasn't nice about the whipping though, because when they come to the Desk Sergeant they don't come for a_ nice _whipping. He never resisted her strength or her brief stints of cruelty, would always take it when she drove her heels into his wounds, pulled his legs out from under him or stood upon his back. Phyllis respected him more the deeper he would surrender.

Three days later Gene Hunt caught the "copycat" and the innocent man was cleared of charges (although he _was_a local nuisance and got banged up a week later for burglary). So whatever burden the sheriff carried with him had slipped away with the pain.

The second time he came to her was when the missus and him really started to have it out. Gene's temper was quicker to light than matchwood then and he spent several nights crashing on the settee in his office. Their sessions were long and she could visibly see the effects for days but once the divorce was settled he eased into an old routine and didn't need her as much.

But tonight he did because Gene Hunt was on his knees suffering every lash Phyllis felt fit to give.

He muttered something to her last question which was a resistance she didn't tolerate. From his discarded camel-coat mantle she found a flask of single malt whiskey which she poured over his bare shoulders and down his back.

"I'll not ask again."

Gene hissed and flexed as the alcohol stung him but looked relieved the pain would make him speak. "My DI."

"Good."

"I want to just - because he - but I can't - "

Phyllis knows this isn't sexual; it's not about pleasure in that kind of sense. It's a duty to help morale and one she doesn't mind but there's a thin line between professional and personal. She's too old to carry any more secrets than what pertains to her so she stops him short so they can carry on. "Do you want to be punished for it?"

"…yes." He relaxes suddenly, the tension falling out of his shoulders as whatever haunted him was temporarily released.

"30 more lashes then_ you_can scrub this floor."

Phyllis Dobbs didn't have a BA in psychiatry, she wasn't here to analyze why Gene wanted this or even why she enjoyed doing it. Gene Hunt enjoyed being hit and she didn't mind hitting him.

It was as simple as that.


	2. Lust Unmitigated

**Lust Unmitigated**

Gene felt the crush of flesh beneath his knuckles and the familiar gush of warm blood against the leather on his hand when he slammed it into Brian Duffy's face. It was the perfect angle to lay the little scrote flat on his back.

"Guv, that's enough."

Sam Tyler was standing to the side, cross like his arms. He was a referee at a rowdy match, not willing to get his hands dirty but the first to pull out the fickle yellow card for Gene's unsporting behavior.

"I'll tell you when he's had enough," Gene barked, but he shook the blood from his hands and didn't lay into the man as he had intended.

DI Tyler assumed his guv regarded his strictness with contempt, because if Gene continued to threaten their suspect that meant he wasn't listening. On the contrary, Gene was very carefully obeying. He would follow Sam's orders, in this case no more using Duffy as a punching bag, but he wanted his DI to be even stricter with him. Sam only told him to stop but didn't embellish his commands, never told Gene to keep his hands by his side, to stand step back, or to humbly mutter an apology. In response Gene rebelled, trying to provoke his detective.

The disregard Sam thought he saw in Gene was really a hunger for stricter commands.

"Word is you've been a bad boy, Duffy. But now the Gene Genie's 'ere to punish you." The sheriff grabbed the unfortunate man by his lapels, shaking him because Gene wasn't allowed to hit.

"You've got the wrong person Mr. Hunt! I wasn't even there, skipped out early for a bridge game. I knew it were wrong but a man needs his diversions."

"That's it then." Sam stepped in, blowing his whistle.

The game was up; this sorry bloke was a dead end, a useless tosser in their pursuit. Gene gripped Duffy tighter, clenching his teeth because the impotence of these moments made him crave what he couldn't have. This would end as it always did: some one runs away with nothing more than a nose bleed, Sam curtly makes his disapproval known, and Gene is left with nothing but the flagellation of his conscience for penance. The repression of this need made Gene dangerous, not his bulk or his height.

"Let him go." Sam sighed, when he saw his guv still tensed and ready for a fight. The weariness in his voice deflated any of Gene's excitement and he let go of their suspect as if the 5'7" 15 stone Irish man were really a porcelain doll.

When they were back at CID Sam took the opportunity to verbally chastise him, just like Gene knew he would.

"Some day you'll go too far, guv. You'll be looking at your hand smashed through a skull and wondering how it got there."

Hunt looked up over the newspaper he was pretending to peruse. "Would you stop me, when that day comes?"

Sam furrowed his brows, perplexed by the question and trying to dig through the desk of Gene's mind. "Yes. I might be the only one who can."

The self-assurance with which Sam Tyler swaggered through CID never gained him any friends but the absolute certainty that his DI had at _that_ moment, that he was the only one who could usurp him in either mind or body (Gene was willing to give a little on the body side), made Hunt grip his paper as if he were going to throttle Brian Duffy all over again.

"But I hope that day never comes," Sam insisted. "Because you _can't_ solve everything with a punch. These are _innocent_ people you assault and some day all of this is going to come back to haunt us."

Gene tossed his paper aside. "When I was I born the doctor struck me across the bum."

Sam blinked. "Wot?"

"I was as innocent as I could be then, you think I deserved that?"

"Well I…I don't think that counts."

"And when I finally started sprouting my first hairs I was beaten by my very good father who loved my brother and I so much he made sure we watched each other's woopings. Course neither of us minded that much because if we didn't man up and take it our mum was next on the list."

"I'm sorry Gene…I didn't—"

"My father was a good man who worked hard to make sure his family had something to eat, just liked to drink too much and remember how his old bastard beat him."

"So it's cyclical."

"No Tyler, what's cyclical is thinking fair is fair. No one's innocent, not really. Our job's just to make sure most of 'em don't commit any of the _big_ No-No's."

"No." Sam shook his head, mentally committing this conversation to that list. "You're wrong. That's not an excuse to go hitting everyone who looks at you funny."

Suddenly DCI Hunt was hovering above Sam, pointing a cheek flushed red with frustration, adrenaline and desire. "Prove it then, teach me a lesson, go on."

Sam stepped back. "I'm _not_ gonna hit you."

"C'mon. Free shot. Right here."

"Give over."

"…What if I_ asked_ you to?"

"You're not serious?" Sam questioned, unnerved because he really wasn't sure. "Look if it's a punch up you want then pick a pub but don't ask _me_."

Dejected once again and reprimanding himself for it, Gene shrunk back. "You girl."

"Well why does it—look," Sam gritted his own teeth in vexation, "first of all you're not doing anything wrong, okay? I mean, you're sort of weirding me out but you're not doing anything wrong. So I don't 'ave to stop you, so _I'm not gonna hit ya_."

"What if I said I deserved it?"

"Well sometimes I think you _do,_" Sam scoffed.

His guv stiffened. "I took backhanders before you came."

"I know. That's in the past now."

"You said it yourself I'm a danger to everyone with a runny nose or a lazy eye."

"….Gene."

"I swear at little old ladies, I don't always wash me hands after a piss, I haven't changed the rubbish bin at home for over two weeks. _Pick_ something."

Sam only stared at him, lost and confused: the idiot. Gene had nothing left to say, could only show his detective what he desired, needed, so fully. He loosened the paisley tie around the pink collar of his neck, getting down on his knees. Even here he felt too tall as Sam stared, opening and closing his mouth like a gaping fish.

"Wot are you doing?"

"I'm asking you," Gene whispered softly, "to prove yourself right. You were so sure of yourself a moment ago…Sam."

But Sam looked more lost than he had the day he stumbled into CID. He couldn't find the door quick enough, leaving his guv on that cold concrete floor.

That night Gene confessed to Phyllis he was infatuated with his DI.


	3. Vice Well Rewarded

**Vice Well Rewarded**

Sam had meant what he'd said; someday Gene would go too far but more than that he feared he would be there too, an impotent witness to the bloody atrocity because a modern man like him, he'd thought, had no place for violence in his well-tailored life. Committing it against any one, no matter if they deserved or _desired_ it, ought to be reprehensible, even disgusting.

But Sam Tyler _didn't_ think Gene Hunt was disgusting, which is why he had spent the last twenty minutes staring at his own reflection in the men's bathroom.

Those fist fights with his guv when he had first arrived were fresh in Sam's mind and he played over every jibe Gene had ever used to rile him up, to make him want to fight. He knew now that Gene had _wanted_ to be hit which only made Sam cognizant of how quickly he had given Gene just that.

Perhaps he wasn't so modern after all.

"Got some makeup for those bags under your eyes."

Sam turned towards the interruption. Phyllis was there blocking his exit from the loo with a frown more rigid than the doorframe she stood under. "Not sure how much good it'll do you."

Jerking his shoulders forward in annoyance, Sam pulled his leather jacket about him like a security blanket. "Wot are you doing in 'ere? Ladies is down the hall."

"I used to clean this room, boss. Every morning. Got down on me hands and knees just so you lot would have a place to squat besides your desks."

Sam looked past Phyllis, faking interest until he could think of a decent excuse to get around her. If he was going to have yet another moral dilemma, he would have preferred not to be around CID's notoriously autocratic desk sergeant. "Sounds lovely."

"Because someone's got to do the dirty job," she continued. "It's never the proper one's either, oh no, too good for that they are."

That's when Sam noticed the thin leather riding crop in WPC Phyllis Dobbs' hand. Her uniform was clean and straight but there was sweat on her forehead and strands of hair had fallen out of her carefully made bun. For a woman whom he'd once joked had forgotten what it was to be a person, at that moment she seemed _horrifically_ human.

"Wait…'ang on-"

"-But I'll tell you this DI Tyler, I wouldn't want your job, not for all the fancy acronyms in the world. Cause I'm bloody proud of what I do. Do you think for a second you could handle even an hour in my shoes?"

Phyllis left him in the bathroom. She left with her stern uniform and her messy hair but not her riding crop. Sam's moral dilemma tied itself into ten more knots.

After Gene Hunt had gotten on his knees, Sam Tyler didn't come back to CID for three days.

Then on Monday morning he rang the desk sergeant and curtly declared his guv should meet him in the office later that night. When he arrived Gene was sitting at his desk, his suit coat draped across the back of his chair. Phyllis sat stiffly on the settee.

Sam entered the office with Phyllis' crop in hand, tracing the criss-crossing pattern on the handle as his own jacket moaned in collusion. "Out of all the things you've asked me to do for you, guv…."

"I've_ asked_ you to shut up on several occasions," Gene growled. "None of which you've listened to."

No one had asked where he'd gone because at least two members of CID knew he would come back, and here Gene was treating him as if nothing had happened at all. Sam set the instrument aside, shaking his head.

"I can't do this because I want to, or because I get a kick out of it, and certainly not because it's my duty." He glanced at Phyllis as her frown deepened. "At the end of the day my duty is to protect people, not to satisfy you, no matter how good everyone_ thinks_ you are."

He could see Gene was anticipating his answer, drawing his leather and his whips and whatever else they used around him like Sam had, a security blanket to shield himself from disappointment. "You sound awfully satisfied with yourself, Tyler."

"My convictions aren't on trial here, guv."

"Neither are_ mine_. You know I'm sick and tired of you walking about with your head shoved your arse. You might be a decent copper but that doesn't make you betta than anyone. Not Chris, or Ray or least of all me."

"No," Sam announced sternly. "I'm _not_ betta then you Gene…and that's why I'm gonna do it."

His guv stared back in silence, so prepared for him to say "no" he hadn't thought of what to do if he'd said "yes". Phyllis just huffed impatiently.

"Well ya could have said so to start with!"

After the confusion had been sorted she explained the basic safety precautions she used with Gene: nothing above the neck, nothing below the waist, nothing Gene couldn't explain. Gene would also use a set of code words in case things went too far. "City" meant everything was supadupa, "whiskey" meant slow down, and "Litton" meant things should stop.

Gene listened, nodding in agreement, loosening his paisley tie while he kneeled in the center of the floor. Sam watched him nervously, wondering exactly what "too far" meant in this case.

"He's not going to get naked is he?"

"Not unless you want him to," Phyllis snorted, "in which case I'll be going home."

"Don't get too excited, Tyler. This isn't the answer to all those poofy dreams of yours."

Sam frowned and turned to Phyllis. "If he's supposed to be a submissive why does he still sound like such a bastard?"

"Cause he's the sheriff of Manchester 99% of the time," she explained, "loud-mouthed, drunken, and swaggering his bollocks about. You have to _work_ to get him to be anything else."

Phyllis handed him the smooth leather crop. "He wants it, mind you, just needs some help getting there."

Sam looked at the little leather thing in his hands; there was nothing powerful or domineering about it, and in comparison to Gene's own body it felt obscenely small. He was supposed to give Gene what he needed, to forget himself, but who would help Sam forget that he was normally adverse to this? There was no mental prep for _him_, just a crop in his hands and a man kneeling at his feet.

This responsibility became tension in Sam's shoulders. "You should be bloody _thanking_ me for this, you know."

Gene's shirt and vest discarded, his welted back exposed, Gene looked the part but he wasn't playing it yet. "For wot, standing around with your mouth open?"

"_Thank_ me, Gene. Cause Phyllis could still do this but you_ had_ to drag me into it didn't you?"

Gene shook his head. "Got nothin' to thank you for have I? Not yet at least."

"You selfish -" There was a loud crack as leather struck flesh.

Gene Hunt shuddered, winced, and exhaled "Thank you" in one fluid movement.

Sam was fixed to the spot for several seconds. He was searching himself, trying to find out what had just happened. He'd hit Gene Hunt, out of what impulse he couldn't place, but more importantly his morals still seemed intact, this world hadn't fallen apart. In fact Sam felt_ grateful _to Gene because he could hear .01% less of the sheriff of Manchester.

"Say it again," he asked, in a voice so gentle he was sure Gene would laugh, but Gene didn't. Every time Sam hit him he would say it.

"Thank you."

"Thank you."

"Thank you."

Gene's back was a map of red splotches before Sam slowed down and was more deliberate with every stroke. He became acutely aware of the body beneath him. Every rise and fall of Gene's chest, every tense muscle, every gasp and sigh and moan: Sam felt it all through the spindle of leather in his hands and he was sure if he listened closely he would hear the break in Gene's armour.

"Unf. Thank you."

"God, thank you Sam."

"Sam, Sam, please."

But Sam waited.

"….Thank you, thank you, thank you."

"…Gene."

Gene was pressing his face into the floor now. All Sam could see of his guv was the mess of blonde hair covering his head and the curve of his spine pushing against taut and bruised skin. He was compliant now, non-threatening, and so utterly relaxed that Sam could only regard him with awe.

DI Tyler couldn't believe this was the man he had been calling "guv" for so many months now. Not once had he seen Gene so raw and exposed before him, not when Gene was kicking in a nonce, not when he was laughing, not even sprawled on his desk in a drunken stupor. Gene Hunt had chosen to lay himself bare before Sam and he was deeply and truly honoured by that.

His vulnerability was the evidence a deep trust he had given Sam, and this trust molded Sam's resolve. It didn't seem violent when he hit him anymore because it wasn't really about the physical act of being hit. Gene Hunt wasn't a masochist, nor Sam a sadist. It was only a tool, subjecting the body to a form of submission in order to get the mind to follow. Perhaps he hadn't even needed the crop at all, perhaps all he needed was to demand verbal obedience but the two had worked together to create this intimate moment, _they _had worked together.

Sam felt closer to Gene than he'd ever been. He knew now it wasn't dominance or violence that was required of him, only some one to hold Gene up.

"Gene," he repeated. "I'm going to tie your hands, and then you're going to bend over your desk."


End file.
